By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko
The High-Priestly Prayer of Jesus Christ
While celebrating the final Passover with His disciples, the Lord Jesus Christ prayed at the end of the Passover supper in these words: “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You” (John 17:1–13). This Gospel passage, in which the teaching concerning the consubstantiality of the Son of God with God the Father — and thus His Divinity — is set forth so clearly in the very words of Jesus Christ Himself, is appointed to be read on the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Synod, who synodically affirmed and restored the true teaching concerning the consubstantiality of the Son of God with God the Father against the heretic Arius.
On the Ecumenical Synods
On the Seventh Sunday after Pascha, the Orthodox Church yearly commemorates and glorifies the Holy and God-bearing Fathers who were present at the First Ecumenical Synod in Nicaea. An Ecumenical Synod is the gathering of the shepherds and teachers of the Church of Christ, insofar as possible from the whole inhabited world, for the confirmation of true dogma and good order among Christians. The great authority and importance of synodal deliberations and decisions are founded upon the words of Jesus Christ Himself, Who said: “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20).








